Evangelia Iliopoulou

Ample research on the use of modern methods of approaching tangible cultural heritage examines the merge of different technical tools to minimize the on site survey and achieve greater results on restoration of heritage architecture. Different techniques are offered, from photogrammetry to laser scanning, in order to collect data, as well as create databases and accurate 3d representations. The most common method of the latter is considered to be H-BIM and/or GIS, which traditionally is linked to other disciplines. However, it is evident that apart from the given opportunities this procedure offers to heritage, it is needed to analyze the problems that rise when trying to combine its different methods.

In order to study the aforementioned, the aim of this paper is mainly to offer an overview of existing research that studies the outcome of the use of heritage BIM when studying late medieval religious architecture in Seville. GIS technologies have, also, been used in the recording of the gothic-mudejar churches of Seville, in combination with BIM. Said procedure can offer an immediate and holistic source of information of the surveying, archeological and historic data including geometry, typology, construction methods, dates or pathologies. As most of gothic-mudejar churches are a result of adaptive reuse, the intention is, also, to focus on the possibilities for recording the socio-spatial phenomena that accompanied this conversion, in a visibly unrelated heritage database.

This could lead to the inclusion of numerous possibilities for a multidisciplinary, accurate and complete registry and ensures the immediate access to the heritage buildings, which gives an opportunity for managing gothic-mudejar churches, in terms of their preservation and restoring. What is more, it can work as a startline of focusing not only in the mere preservation but, also, in the cultural and touristic use of the very researched but sometimes overlooked medieval heritage.

El objetivo de esta investigación es realizar una aproximación socioespacial al fenómeno de la desacralización, profanación y secularización del patrimonio arquitectónico religioso, profundizando en los procesos de innovación tecnológica que se están desarrollando en las últimas décadas en el ámbito europeo y, especialmente, en el español. Tras una pormenorizada búsqueda y una cuidadosa selección de edificios donde la reutilización adaptativa se ha llevado a cabo, la investigación estudia -con una metodología genealógica e interpretativa-, aquellos casos más significativos destacando la adecuación de los nuevos usos y la innovación tecnológica de cada uno.

This essay analyses the history of Claremont Road Occupation in London, 1994, which acted as a milestone in the M11 anti road campaign. The temporary urban transformation of the Road is examined as a tactic for brief spatial reconfiguration of the area, for the duration of the protest. Taking into consideration the contrasting creative models of the neo-liberal Creative Cities and the carnivalesque activism, this essay reviews the protest of Claremont road as a festal, radical performance. The paper concludes with an examination of the area as an urban palimpsest of co-existing layers of past histories and current realities and, also, immaterial heterotopias of functions and memories.

New conditions have challenged the role of the architect in numerous ways and call for a reshaping of both the profession and the practice for them to survive in the future. Is it a matter of merely adapting to the new settings? It is suggested that the next principles are not to be found through the obvious solution of yet constraining technology, but examining architecture as a socio-political construct. In order to explain the social aspect of delivering architecture, a guerilla architectural practice is assessed as a case study. Muf architects/artists are examined as a successful example of managing a balance between the necessity of delivering a project and the need to stay true to social values.

The research is comprised by a case study of two juxtaposed examples. On the one hand, there is an irreal space, the Police Town, with orderings of control, conflict and privatization. What is more, those elements that would be the usual ones existing in a city, are here overlaid and nested together. This absurd stage works as a means to prevent subversion in urban spaces. On the other hand, avant-garde urban tactics are a core expression of subversion: is it Heterotopias or Homotopias manifested through these “urban crimes” and reshaping space providing it with an imaginary order and reason? Built examples of the city -hidden tunnels and underground spaces- are places outside of the realm of reality, or secret passages, incisions that seem to section the city. These incisions, nevertheless, can provide a new way of decoding our view of the city. This juxtaposition discloses a philosophical rationale, highlighting the simulacra of an original visit versus a recast of the urban stage. Nonetheless, the chosen examples bear a difference in their spatial organization, too, exposing an upside down and cut through vision of the city.

Urban Exploring is the fringe practice of entering disused or inaccessible parts of the urban city and infrastructure. This paper analyses the history of Urban Exploration and the reasons why the urban dwellers engage in it. It, also, draws on similarities between modern explorers and preceding unconventional urban theorists or artists. The paper concludes with the view that exploration can be a viable, alternative way of decoding and exposing the hidden places of the city, a tactic to produce space and give use to mundane urban areas.